I haven’t been listening to music anymore. I used to love discovering new music, and sharing old favorites. I once saw a poster for an artist at a cool bar in Berlin, and proudly became their superfan, seeing my own non-algorithmic discovery perform ~10 times in concert in the next half-decade.
But podcasts have taken over all the minutes and hours from music. It happened at first slowly, and then all at once, as the saying goes. And for me, this is a fine trade. I love my podcasts. I love the hosts. The inside jokes. The reliability of schedule. The balance: some of them highbrow for learning, some lowbrow for blowing off steam. And my rotation! My rotation is perfectly tuned to fill up my workouts, showers, and commutes each week, with each show for the right moment, all summing to just the right total runtime.
So I do miss listening to music. And I keep saying I’ll get back to it. But, I’ve realized doing so will require another trade, music to substitute for something else. My podcasts aren’t going anywhere. The most likely option is replacing an hour of evening streaming services while cooking dinner. That’ll happen once I get my record player fixed, I tell myself. But it’s been like a year and we do have the Sonos … maybe for this consumer, podcasts have just won.
sabbatiblog 